Two residents have each been scammed out of $60 in the past two weeks after they made online payments to individuals posing as the Town of Camp Verde’s Parks and Recreation Department.
Believing they were registering as vendors for this year’s Corn Fest, the residents instead sent their money to online imposters, who took the cash and, of course, never registered them for the event because they are not affiliated with the town, according to Parks and Recreation Manager Shawna Figy.
“Facebook is specifically where we see most of the impersonation taking place,” Figy said. “We see it all the time in our social media posts, where [scammers] will reply with links to events and claim that vendor space is still available” and people can pay them to reserve a space.
Parks and recreation staff proceeded to post a scam alert to their Facebook page on Tuesday, July 1, warning residents of the online imposters “using our flyers, logos and event names to collect money and redirect you to false signups,” the alert reads.
Infographic courtesy of Camp Verde Parks and Recreation
Figy added that there are a couple of individuals who are posting in local Facebook groups, arts and crafts sites and other online locations, posing as Camp Verde Parks and Recreation.
Most commonly town staffers see it “in the comments of our posts,” Figy said. “Because we’re a public entity, we can’t delete our history, so we just hide those [scam] comments. … I have a feeling that we’ve had people be scammed before, but they don’t necessarily tell us.”
Clarkdale Assistant Manager of Parks and Communications Chell Smart said that Clarkdale has been facing the same issue, however she was unaware of any Clarkdale residents losing money to this type of scam.
“The biggest thing is making sure that people … do their due diligence to make sure that whatever they’re clicking on is a legitimate site,” Figy said.
Camp Verde Parks and Recreation only uses Sportsites.com and Eventeny.com for official event registrations, Figy said, and all other web addresses can safely be ignored by potential vendors, musicians, attendees and athletes who may be registering for events.
“If you see something suspicious — a weird link, a different platform, or someone asking for payment that doesn’t sound quite right — stop and call us,” Parks and Recreation posted. “You’re always welcome to swing by the Parks & Rec office to confirm anything before you sign up.”
While YCSO Volunteer Fraud Investigator Ron Norfleet said he was unaware of other parks and recreation impersonator scams taking place in Yavapai County.
While Figy said she doesn’t know what type of payment the scammers used to collect the money, Norfleet noted that cryptocurrency has become the preferred means of collection in recent months by scammers.
One bit of good news is that while YCSO has been averaging about one daily report in recent weeks from Yavapai County residents reporting phone scammers impersonating law enforcement agencies in an attempt to extort payment for nonexistent outstanding warrants, Camp Verde Marshal’s Office Sgt. Dustin Richardson said that he “hasn’t really seen many law enforcement-related scams through Camp Verde” over the last six months.
However, Richardson noted that within the last six months, a Camp Verde woman lost $120,000 to a tech support scam and made the payment at a bitcoin ATM.
“They just told her there was a problem with her computer,” Richardson said. “They remoted into her computer, got a lot of personal information and then they start using that personal information against you, because you think that these people know more about you than they actually do. But then when they get into your computer, they can see all that information about you, so they just use it to make them more believable, so that you fall into that trap of believing that you’re part of something that you’re not.”
For more information and to confirm event registration with Camp Verde Parks and Recreation call (928) 554-0820.
